Approximately one in 10 people admitted to hospitals in the United States acquire a new infection during their stay. These nosocomial infections result in an estimated 100,000 deaths per year in the United States. Nosocomial infections increase the length of patient stays in hospital, contributing to increased healthcare staffing levels, increased costs and increased use of resources. This situation contributes significantly to the overall stress on the healthcare systems and increases wait times. It is estimated that approximately half of these nosocomial infections are the result of inadequate hand hygiene compliance by healthcare staff.
There is considerable evidence that hand hygiene compliance is a primary means to reduce nosocomial infections and the transmission of pathogens. Pathogens are normally present on the skin of healthcare workers and patients and on surfaces surrounding the patient. These organisms can be transferred to healthcare workers' hands where they can survive for periods ranging from minutes to hours. The final step in the transmission process is the transfer of organisms from the contaminated hands of the caregiver to other patients or clean environmental surfaces. Alcohol-based hand rubs seem to be significantly more effective than washing with soap and water and in the reduction of transmission of pathogens.
Wearable dispensers of alcohol-based hand rub can provide ready access hand hygiene without the need to visit a fixed hand washing station and can reduce the time required to perform hand hygiene especially for busy staff such as nurses.
Unfortunately, published studies have generally found that compliance with hand hygiene requirements by healthcare workers averages about 40%. Various traditional educational and management interventions can increase awareness and improve this in the short term but generally do not provide sustainable improvements.
Some prior art systems such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,392,546 to Smith, entitled “Hand Washing Compliance Measurement and Monitoring System” monitor compliance but have several possible disadvantages. A possible disadvantage of the system of Smith is that there is either no prompting of the user when it is necessary to perform hand washing, or the user is prompted every time they enter a zone, irrespective of whether they performed appropriate hand washing or not. Neither scenario would seem to encourage the user or caregiver to improve hand washing compliance. Other possible disadvantages of the system of Smith are interference between site ID transmitters between closely spaced sites and lack of a method to prompt users to wash their hands after extended periods of time within the same zone.
Accordingly, an improved system and method to encourage increased hand hygiene compliance in environments where the transfer of pathogens can be dangerous, remains highly desirable.